III.: The price of labour, the chief standard that regulates the values of all things.

7. The values of land and labour do, as it were of themselves, mutually settle or adjust one another; and as all things or commodities, are the products of those two; so their several values are naturally adjusted by them. But as in most productions, labour hath the greatest share; the value of labour is to be reckoned the chief standard that regulates the values of all commodities; and more especially as the value of land is, as it were, already allowed for in the value of labour itself.

Men’s various necessities and appetites, oblige them to part with their own commodities, at a rate proportionable to the labour and skill that had been bestowed upon those things, which they want in exchange: If they will not comply with the market, their goods will remain on their hands; and if at first, one trade be more profitable than another, skill as well as labour and risques of all sorts, being taken into the account; more men will enter into that business, and in their outvying will undersell one another, till at length the great profit of it is brought down to a par with the rest.